[Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270

[David Leeming]

Thanks Peter,

dmesg | grep eth

shows that the kernel sees the hardware, at least eth0 and eth1 hardware/MAC
addresses are shown, and those agree with that shown from ifconfig -a which
shows eth0, eth1 and lo but only lo with inet address (loopbackl). The
physical ports appear to be inactive, the LEDs don't light up and when
trying with a cable and computer, no network detected.

Reinstalling with 0.6, the networking works fine

David 

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Robinson [mailto:pbrobinson at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 1 August 2012 7:28 p.m.
To: Jerry Vonau
Cc: David Leeming; XS Devel
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Networking issue with XS 0.7 on EPC-AT270

On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 2:16 AM, Jerry Vonau <jvonau at shaw.ca> wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-08-01 at 09:57 +1000, David Leeming wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>>
>>
>> I am training some teachers in PNG to set up school servers. We are
>> using the EPC-AT270 (brochure attached, specs on page 7) and
>> previously have installed X_-v0.6 with no problems at all.
>>
>>
>>
>> This time I am trying XS-0.7 but we have a networking issue. It does
>> not configure either of the two Ethernet ports.
>>
>>
>>
>> The EPC-AT270 has two Ethernet ports.
>>
>>
>>
>> The installation is completely default as per the wiki 0.7
>> installation guide, from CD, starting with an unformatted HDD. No
>> errors are displayed on the screen during installation (but there is
>> some scrolling of data).
>>
>>
>>
>> After installing, the first symptom is that when plugging in a
>> computer or AP to either eth0 or eth1, the port LEDs do not light up
>> and no network is seen by the connecting device.
>>
>>
>>
>> When querying ifconfig -a I can see eth0 and eth1 but they have no IP
>> configuration.
>>
>>
>>
>> Any next steps? Meanwhile we are reverting to 0.6 which is OK on the
>> EPC
>
> To late to run mii-tool now, or check which kernel modules were loaded.
> Or check if HWADDR was set in ifcfg-eth0|1 while having 2 nics with the
> same kernel module: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/11678

mii-tool is mostly (should be completely) obsolete. You should use
ethtool for this functionality as it will work with all detected NICs.
"dmesg | grep eth" will let you know what the kernel sees.

The Marvell ethernet ports might not be well supported on CentOS 6.
You might want to check if a newer CentOS kernel adds support.
Alternatively you can likely use a Fedora kernel. dsd did that when he
had issues with NIC support on one of the deployments he was involved
with. I suggest checking the mailing list archives for the details.

Regards,
Peter